Enderle with more article fun

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http://www.technewsworld.com/story/60364.html

This week ends with one of the most important days of the year. It's called "Black Friday," and it could decide the future of a lot of battles and tell us whether this will be a good or bad season economically.

There are two big battles that may actually be decided this week based on initial sales numbers. For Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) Latest News about Microsoft, which had its butt kicked last year by the iPod, this is its chance to show it gets it and to take the fight to Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) Latest News about Apple.

For HD-DVD and Blu-ray, this is when Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT) Latest News about Wal-Mart steps in and tries to do to this market what it did to TVs last year. There is a reasonable chance HD-DVD will exit the winner; however, Blu-ray isn't sleeping, and Sony (NYSE: SNE) Latest News about Sony is initially using Amazon (Nasdaq: AMZN) Latest News about Amazon.com to help its case.

Since Black Friday is when a lot of you will be out buying, I'm going to provide some advice on what to look for and some choices you may not have thought of, and suggest that you not wait until Friday to buy at least one item.

Finally we'll close with one of my favorite products for the year: the new HP (NYSE: HPQ) See the HP Proliant DL380 G5 Server with Systems Insight Manager – Click here. Latest News about Hewlett-Packard Home Server, which has evidently outsold even laptops on Amazon for its first week.
Battle One: Blu-ray vs. HD-DVD

The most widely watched battle that will be fought this Friday is the one between Blu-ray Disc and HD-DVD. To catch you up, right now both platforms are selling well below 10 percent of potential because of the conflict that exists between them. Last year, the two sides went back and forth, with HD-DVD in front at the start Blu-ray in front in the middle, and both basically tied now with momentum back in the HD-DVD camp.

In advance of Black Friday, Blu-ray has launched a two-for-one deal with Amazon, which should push disk sales up sharply. This isn't as good as it initially looks because you can't mix and match between Sony and Disney (NYSE: DIS) films. Still, revenue could actually decline for Blu-ray at the same time depending on whether this results in a doubling of sales volume. Also, PC Blu-ray drives just dropped below $200, which suddenly makes PCs with both HD-DVD and Blu-ray drives a possibility and should push sales on PCs anyway.

However, on Black Friday, Wal-Mart is expected to go very aggressive, with HD-DVD player prices dropping well below $200. While disk sales are important tactically, player sales are strategic. Given that the PS3 isn't expected to be hot this year, if they execute as expected, the battle could drift so solidly into the HD-DVD camp that the fight will be over.

Now, the HD-DVD camp will need a better than 4x sales rate over Blu-ray to do this, but Wal-Mart alone is capable of exceeding this volume and demonstrated that with TVs last year, so this thing could be over by year end. I stress the word "could," however, as the Blu-ray guys clearly see this coming and may not have played all their cards yet. The good news is that under $200, the things aren't that bad a risk.